Some pointers to keep in mind when buying fabric
· Hold fabric up to the light and make sure the weave is tight, even and uniform, with no loose or undone threads. If the fabric has beads or sequins, make sure they're securely attached.
· Check the grain of the fabric. The vertical grain should run straight up and down the garment, and the horizontal grain should run at a 90-degree angle to this line. Especially important on tubular knits, we all know the frustration of a favourite Tee Shirt after a few washes that only irons flat in a twist of side seams.
· Crumple natural fibres, such as wool, to see if it bounces back, either immediately or in several minutes this indicating resistance to wrinkling. Allowing you to make a choice around whether or not the clients will resist the crease factor.
· On fabrics like viscose, denim and pure cotton enquire what the shrink tolerance is. There may be between 3-10% a tolerance, which needs to be considered seriously. How will this be handled? Bulk washing or laundering finished garments have a cost implication that needs to be considered.
· Remember that certain colours are finished in processes that will cause the colour to change depending on whether you are looking at them under florescent tubes or natural light. You would not be the first person to have had a perfect colour match until you got home, harrumph.
· While on the subject of fabric finishes, remember that mills often put on a starch like substance to stabilise floppy fabrics that may be prone to distort. If you are not sure buy ½ m. Cut it in half measure width and length and wash it in the worst possible conditions, re measure against the control and check for differences in handle, then make an informed decision.
· Learning to use all your senses when choosing fabric, especially your sense of smell. Fabrics have their own distinctive smells, silk for me is a very organic animal smell, while wool is also animal but more domesticated dog. Cotton often doesn’t have a specific smell but when breathed in comes in colder than other fabric. One develops one’s own unique vocabulary for what one is sensing. Touch is a given, however learning to feel what is in your fingertips takes a bit of patience. Mills are very clever in emulating natural fibres from manmade chemicals. For example, when extruding filaments for microfibers they use a tube that mimics a silk worms’ mouth that is puckered, hence why the finish of a microfiber can be mistaken for a silk by the way the fabric sticks to your fingerprints. This is a good time to smell the fabric if you are not sure, silks distinctive smell cannot be faked. Many people have been duped into paying silk prices for a microfiber.
· When all else fails, and you find yourself with limited options for choice, remember a good block fusing process can take the poorest quality fabric bonding into something that is totally usable.
· That Dying will always give you unique colours and finishes.
· And lastly that there are a couple of treasures in haberdashery shops that will give you original textures to augment an otherwise unexceptional garment.
My two favourites are; Purus in Fordsburg 0118331883 who still has stock of pure Swiss cotton narrow fabrics, quaint laces and unusual elastics. Here is a good time to rely on your sense of smell; often these elastics are quite old, and one can smell if the elastin has perished so don’t buy it as its stretch recovery won’t last long.
The other is R Hammond in the bottom of Doornfontein 011 334 6728, ah what an adventure, wear clothes that you don’t mind getting dirty and always handy to keep wet wipes in the car so that you can clean your hands when you are finished.
R Hammond is family owned, in the old days the Father was a real pack rat and with some luck you can still find handmade lace collars, neatly bound with a beautiful ribbon. The paper attached testifies that the collars were made in the British colony of India. This dates the collars to at least 1933, gosh I just purr with satisfaction. There are many quirky things like massive plastic buttons from the 60ties, silver buckles that have oxidised over time still wrapped in newspaper, all it takes is patient and a little imagination to translate then into making a garment unique and utterly fabulous.
They are actually a large supplier of haberdashery and trims, at exceptionally reasonable prices but these obviously don’t capture my imagination and send me on a flight of inspiration like the intrigue of discovering what is in the bottom of old boxes.
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